| Sascha Weidner | |
| Birth Date: | 1 August 1974 |
| Birth Place: | Georgsmarienhütte, West Germany |
| Death Place: | Norden, Germany |
| Nationality: | German |
| Field: | Art photography |
| Training: | Braunschweig University of Art |
Sascha Weidner (1 August 1974[1] in Georgsmarienhütte – 9 April 2015 in Norden[2]) was a German photographer and artist, who lived and worked in Belm and Berlin. Weidner's work deals with the creation of a radical subjective pictorial world.[3] His photographs are characterized by perceptions, aspirations and illuminate the world of the subconscious. His work has been exhibited and published internationally.
As a teenager, Weidner was interested in the arts and was an active painter. From 1992 to 1993 Weidner lived abroad in Solon, Ohio, USA. After attaining a baccalaureate in 1995 at the Graf-Stauffenberg-Gymnasium in Osnabrück, Weidner studied Fine Arts and Visual Communication from 1996 to 2004 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brunswick, completing his studies with an honorary diploma.[4] In 2004 he undertook a mentorship, studying fine art photography under Dörte Eißfeldt. After this, Weidner worked as a freelance artist in Belm and Berlin.
Weidner's paintings are characterized often by trips that he was able to undertake through various scholarships. In 2004 and 2006 he traveled with the German Academic Exchange Service for several months at a time to Los Angeles. In 2013 he gained a scholarship from the Goethe Institute at the Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto, Japan,[5] and in 2014 at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing, China.[6]
From 2010 to 2012 Weidner was a lecturer in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. In 2012 he was appointed as a member of the German Photographic Academy.[7]
Weidner died on April 9, 2015, due to the consequences of an unexpected heart failure.
For his work he was awarded, among others, the "Stiftungspreis Fotografie" of the Alison & Peter Klein Foundation[8] and in 2010 the Young Art Prize for Film and Media Arts Berlin of the Academy of Arts Berlin.[9]
Weidner's work has been presented nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions.
Weidner described himself as a "romantically moved traveler" and his photographs as highly subjective.[10] For him the medium of photography was the artistic means of expression in order to weave together real worlds with the own internal images. From his mostly biographical photo expeditions, picture essays arose about essential questions of human existence.
Over a decade of creating images, an ever-evolving picture library came together in which, as the photographer said, "everything is important: Cultural events, disasters, clichés, banalities, Political things"[11] Weidner composed his works from a large pool, which was composed of family photographs, own work and found or mass media and borrowed images from the history of art. Thereby boundaries between staging and authenticity blurred, to highlight the often unreal, sometimes suggestive atmosphere of reality.[12]
His motives as well as the titles of his works and exhibitions refer to biographical references and metaphors of his own experiences. For example: "Until it hurts", "What remains", "The presence of absence", "Staying is nowhere" or "Beauty remains".[13]
Weidner's canon of images sprang from the way of life of young people and tells of the "perceptions, longings and visions of those generations who experienced their youth in the 80s, 90s and 2000s." Therefore, Weidner's approach was very relevant for these periods and gave evidence both of an artistic consideration of actual and imaginary spaces.
In essence, a melancholic perspective on the world marked Weidner’s point of view. The basic patterns in his image systems are attributed to his very own relationships. He contrasts subjects such as life and death, beauty and transience as well as questioning origin, identity and self-determination. In this sense, Weidner was not limited to portraying his own environment, but spoke of life itself.
Weidner's temporary art installations were rooms to be experienced. These were often based on interactions between the media and the viewers. The immediate, authentic and honest methodology Weidner applied to his work is anchored to the tradition of photographers such as Nan Goldin, Larry Clark or Juergen Teller. His sensitive understanding of composition and coloring in his photographic series also recalls the lightness and transparency of the elemental and symbolic images of Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi.[14]